An international team led by scientists from the Goethe University and the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, has discovered an intense warming phase around 52 million years ago in drill cores obtained from the seafloor near Antarctica  a region that is especially important in climate research. The study published in the journal Nature shows that tropical vegetation, including palms and relatives of today's tropical Baobab trees, was growing on the coast of Antarctica 52 million years ago. These results highlight the extreme contrast between modern and past climatic conditions on Antarctica and the extent of global warmth during periods of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Around 52 million years ago, the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was more than twice as high as today. "If the current CO2 emissions continue unabated due to the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, as they existed in the distant past, are likely to be achieved within a few hundred years", explains Prof. Jörg Pross, a paleoclimatologist at the Goethe University and member of the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) in Frankfurt, Germany. "By studying naturally occurring climate warming periods in the geological past, our knowledge of the mechanisms and processes in the climate system increases. This contributes enormously to improving our understanding of current human-induced global warming."

Computer models indicate that future climate warming will be particularly pronounced in high-latitude regions, i.e., near the poles. Until now, however, it has been unclear how Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems responded in the geological past to a greenhouse climate with high atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

The scientists working with Prof. Pross analysed rock samples from drill cores on the seabed, which were obtained off the coast of Wilkes Land, Antarctica, as part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The rock samples are between 53 and 46 million years old and contain fossil pollen and spores that are known to originate from the Antarctic coastal region. The researchers were thus able to reconstruct the local vegetation on Antarctica and, accordingly, interpret the presence of tropical and subtropical rainforests covering the coastal region 52 million years ago.

The scientists used the drillship JOIDES Resolution to recover sediment cores off the Antarctic coast. Drilling reached a depth of more than 1,000 m below the sea floor. Credit: Rob Dunbar, Stanford University

In an area where the Antarctic ice sheet borders the Southern Ocean today, frost-sensitive and warmth-loving plants such as palms and the ancestors of today's baobab trees flourished 52 million years ago. The scientists' evaluations show that the winter temperatures on the Wilkes Land coast of Antarctica were warmer than 10 degrees Celsius at that time, despite three months of polar night. The continental interior, however, was noticeably cooler, with the climate supporting the growth of temperate rainforests characterized by southern beech and Araucaria trees of the type common in New Zealand today. Additional evidence of extremely mild temperatures was provided by analysis of organic compounds that were produced by soil bacteria populating the soils along the Antarctic coast.

These new findings from Antarctica also imply that the temperature difference between the low latitudes and high southern latitudes during the greenhouse phase 52 million years ago was significantly smaller than previously thought. "The CO2 content of the atmosphere as assumed for that time interval is not enough on its own to explain the almost tropical conditions in the Antarctic", says Pross. "Another important factor was the transfer of heat via warm ocean currents that reached Antarctica." When the warm ocean current collapsed and the Antarctic coast came under the influence of cooler ocean currents, the tropical rainforests including palms and Baobab relatives also disappeared.

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User comments : 58

OK, this is unbelievable, is common sense a lost art or are theses people so bought and paid for, any nonsense passes for science. Palm trees NEVER grew at the poles, this was at least one pole shift ago (10500 BC) and likely before the next previous pole shift at the Dinasaur Extinction when the Hawain Island hot spot chain made a hard left. Antartica was at the equator then and no surprise - Palm trees. There are a lot of people here talking global warming, this is so important for our understanding of this problem because as the article shows many incorrect conclusions are being thrown into the mix. Palm trees at the poles! ya and wall street has been cleaned up.

PS, the hawiian hot spot chain changed direction 12,500 years ago as well, just that not enough time has passed yet to tell. It will now travel paralel to the present equator or more to the point paralel to the direction of Earths rotation.

53 million years ago India and Asia came together and built the himalayas over the next few million years, lots of geological processes at work. Antarctica was also not where it is now 52 million years ago, it was north and east of it's present location. Coupled with a warm atmosphere palm trees aren't that big of a surprise.

rubberman - RR is wrong. Antarctica was not at the equator 53 million years ago, it was not too far away from its current polar location (note that the authors recognise this when they mention 3 months of polar night). And if RR thinks palm trees "NEVER" grew in Antarctica, he/she should look at the fossils him/herself.

LOL allex, just a coincidence the Hawaiin hot spot chain runs tangent to the Canadian Shield, a circular area of exposed bedrock that includes Greenland and its ice age ice as well as the area of North America that was previously covered with ice. No chance this Canadian Shield defines where the previous pole was and where a normal sized polar ice cap ground down bedrock for millions of years. Because under this scenario this hot spot chain is representing equator line and therefore before its sudden left 50 million years ago it would define an equator running through Antarctica. Might even expect Palm trees grew in Antarctica then. Luckily we have you to set us straight.

And while we at it allex, if you got all the answers please explain why the Hawaiin hot spot chain suddenly lurned left 50 million years ago, I need a new laugh. The humour of your pole hugging palm trees growing in complete darkness for months on end is wearing off.

'lurned'? Sorry, I don't speak retarish. But if you were asking for the cause of the apparent change of direction -> tectonic drift might be good place to start. Don't ask me to explain basic geophysics to a troll.

I need a new laugh

What's wrong with your old one?

palm trees growing in complete darkness for months on end

http://aphs.world..._353.jpgPicture of a palm tree growing in Reykjavik, Iceland. Seems like polar night (between October and February) has little effect on its growth.

The mystery of climate change will NEVER be resolved by restricting our focus to just climate. Climate does not occur in a box, free from the influence of other scientific disciplines.

Specialization was adopted as a way to increase the efficiency of large corporations. It was adapted to science, in large part, because it stabilizes the system of science. In other words, it reduces the breadth of knowledge of employees sufficient to undercut their ability to threaten managers. It does NOT help us to solve complex problems.

Yes, science is too big to know. But, specialization is the wrong solution. We can deal with complexity in other ways -- by, for instance, investigating ways of facilitating the use of databases of knowledge as extensions of our minds, and by assisting the mind with incorporating knowledge structures.

The solution to complex problems like climate change must be based upon an interdisciplinary approach to science if it is to succeed.

Newsflash Allex, the picture you showed is of a palm tree growing in an atrium in Iceland {enclosed, heated and lighted}, natural occuring palms are found no further north then southern France. And simply refering to Plate tectonics as an answer to why the Hawaiin chain changed direction is no answer except one - science doesnt have a clue.

ClimateGate may go down in history as the event which hastened the demise of peer review. Study after study demonstrates that peer review only has downsides. There is no upside to it: It takes too long; it doesn't effectively catch fraud; it is biased; and scientists have figured out how to game the system.

We should switch to a peer-to-peer or post-publication review system, and switch all of those resources which we currently WASTE on peer review to resources designed to assist regular laypeople with truly comprehending and assimilating the FLOOD of information coming at them.

We have the technology to do this today. And we have decades now of learning theory already in place to support the design of such tools. We can design them with great confidence that they will improve comprehension.

So, why are we wasting our time battling on forums like this? Do you guys see that everybody is wasting their time? We cannot build knowledge structures with this infrastructure.

RE: you know who you are: The comment list is just like fox news... one nugget of truth twisted into ridiculousness. and to the last comment. Peer review is an integral and essential part of government, science, religion, the advancement of knowledge... to say otherwise is crazy.

In 15 minutes of video, this person remixed video which he apparently just found on YouTube into a cohesive argument. The format is infinitely superior to what is happening in forums like this. We are treating knowledge as though it still exists on paper: Digital knowledge permits far more advanced cognitive processes than just stopping once we find the arguments which suit our pre-existing beliefs. With digital remixing, regular people can use the testimony of experts to construct arguments which support worldviews.

By adopting this more sophisticated infrastructure, we can have more complex conversations. If we then take it a step further and become organized and explicit in the larger structures of knowledge which we are promoting -- using a series of concept maps -- there is more hope that one person can convince another.

Re: "Peer review is an integral and essential part of government, science, religion, the advancement of knowledge... to say otherwise is crazy."

It's incredibly ironic, but all of you guys who (unscientifically) promote peer review have never thought to stop and take a look at the peer-review literature on peer review. If you did, you'd be very discouraged by what you found.

At the very heart of our scientific process is a faith-based approach to science. Who is reviewing the peer review process? People have many times by now, and there is a consistent pattern to these investigations.

It does not work, and it's a waste of money. It's time to get over this, and move on to something better.

Has anybody perhaps noticed that hardly anybody follows anybody else's links? Has anybody noticed that the process of listening to lectures and memorizing problem sets is insufficient to assimilate knowledge, and correct misconceptions? Has anybody noticed that the large majority of laypeople would not even understand this huge body of knowledge, even if they went out of their way to visit these papers?

If science is too complex for more than just a tiny slice of the population to understand it, then how is this different than religion? The point of science was presumably that we could all follow along. The problem which needs to be solved is at the receiver end. And it's not that we need to be protected from "bad" ideas, (which peer review does not even accomplish anyways -- any and all papers get published somewhere); it's that we need to be assisted in understanding these papers.

I can tell you one thing for #$#@%$ sure, the poles shifted 28 degrees just 12,500 years ago and science does nothing but cover it up, given this is vital to the climate change debate as there were no wild climate swings producing imajinary ice ages, that auctually we had very normal and stable ice caps the last million years (cept when the giant rocks smacked us)I can assure everyone the peer review system is not working. And I would add "when a fish stinks it stinks from the head down.

Why doesn't doesn't the article explicitly state the latitude of the drill core (off Wilkes Land could mean anywhere from 43S ie Tasmania to 65S) and what the latitude of this spot might have been 53 MY ago.

Correction RR: The DIRECTION of the polar axis shifts direction continuously - (it will be pointed 47 degrees from its current position in 12k years or so). But the pole itself does not move significantly on this time scale. It stays about 23 deg

Hi Marble, It is difficult to explain in short space but I am not talking about earths wobble {23 degree ecliptic}, in fact if time permited I could show u this wobble started just 12,500 years ago due to pole shifting impacts. I am trying to show Earths axis (pole) was situated at Hudson Bay before impacts [center of north american and greenland ice sheets) and that after impacts it moved to current position in Arctic ocean. Greenland still remained in arctic circle and kept ice, north america was left outside new arctic circle and ice melted.Hope this helps.

I love off the wall ideas and out of the box thinking RR. But plugging your numbers into the basic equations of rotational dynamics and angular momentum for a spherical body makes your hypothesis unlikely to say the least. The mass of the impactors required to torque the planet to the degree you state exceeds the mass of the entire astroid belt (<.005 earth masses). Even so, such impacts would be more than enough to blow off the atmosphere and vaporize the oceans - or worse.

I dont have all the answers Marble but some of the big ones. This pole shift did take place and there are at least three 500 km wide craters involved. I dont doubt your expertise but there is a solution and if these impacts arnt sufficient then it just means something else is involved.

RR: A 10-15km impactor would typically be required to create a 500km crater on earth. Even if it was made of solid lead it would be BILLIONS of times less massive than the earth. Imagine a grain of sand impacting a fully loaded semi traveling 100mph and you get the idea. You and I would not be here today if the pole shifted by thousands of miles in the last 12000 years, so whatever evidence you have is misleading you - big time. I applaud your independent thinking but ALWAYS invoke Occam's Razor - liberally.

Marble, I can think of many possibilities outside box that may apply, for instance there is a 500 km wide bullet hole that completely pierces the Earth crust at lower right Hudson Bay. That hole could have fit a 500 km wide bullit. Its pristine nature shows it never sat under miles of moving ice of an ice age and therefore is very recent. Its missing half shows it cracked the continent and shifted the two sides apart sending the other half to the north. Its location center of a now rising land area (isostatic rebound) shows this impact drove half the continent down. But the simplest solution is to forget all this. Science is closed.

Has anybody noticed that the large majority of laypeople would not even understand this huge body of knowledge

A large majority of laypeople don't care to understand this huge body of knowledge. Allowing this group to ascertain the veracity of scientific knowledge is akin to allowing people to vote for unfamiliar political candidates for reasons like "because I like the sound of his name". (and consider what that's gotten us here in the U.S.)

Disregarding lack of knowledge in the field, do you really think people in general are less subject to bias than scientists who review papers?

FWIW, I'm not convinced bias is a significant problem anyways. But, if there is a problem, figuring out how to fix the system (i.e. make it difficult to be biased) is a way less expensive than throwing the whole system out.

OK, this is unbelievable, is common sense a lost art or are theses people so bought and paid for, any nonsense passes for science. Palm trees NEVER grew at the poles, this was at least one pole shift ago (10500 BC) and likely before the next previous pole shift at the Dinasaur Extinction when the Hawain Island hot spot chain made a hard left. Antartica was at the equator then and no surprise - Palm trees. There are a lot of people here talking global warming, this is so important for our understanding of this problem because as the article shows many incorrect conclusions are being thrown into the mix. Palm trees at the poles! ya and wall street has been cleaned up.

The only references to pole shifts around 12k years ago was a magnetic pole shift --- and even it seems to be a dubious proposition.

Hi Sennekuyl, who are you referencing, your point is unclear. I would suggest you investigate 12,000 year old Gobeki Tepe to understand highly advanced civilizations were around to witness exactly what happened, something else science has done its best to cover up.

The point was that the claim that there was a pole shift ~10k years ago is unverified(able?). I quoted what I had a problem with.

My understanding of the claim was referring the earth's tilt changed from horizontal to close to it's current position (23 odd degrees?). I later wondered if the claim was about a magnetic pole shift however that wouldn't put Antarctica at the equator. Also the last significant magnetic pole shift was 2000 years prior to the alleged significant event.

As to people recording what happened. No problem with that, as long as it is recognised that witnessing without understanding is a terrible source.

My verification there is a cover up is that almost no scientists appear to have the kahunas to stand up and say perhaps there is another explanation, even in the face of overwelming evidence of pole shift. Obviously there are severe consequences for doing so. I can talk about the evidence till Im blue in the face but its like talking to a wall. This pole shift 12,500 years ago destroyed advanced civilizations (sunk land masses etc) as great earth changes took place but there were survivors and they knew exactly what happensd and they measured and recorded a 28 degree pole shift. Thats why north america was covered in ice and siberia was covered in mammals (duh). But science is not interested in eye witness evidence or truth, just keeping the sheep in their pasture. And that doesnt seem to be to difficult because no one seems to have a problem with palm trees at the south pole!

I mean you have complete hairless baby mammoths coming out of the frozen Siberian muck along the arctic ocean coast that supposedly thrived there during a ice age and then majically died and remained frozen for over ten thousand years during a warm interglacial. I mean this is one plus one till science gets a hold of it.

How does one know it is not you who have the kahunas to say maybe there is another explanation (other than a pole shift).

What do you mean by pole shift? A change in the axial tilt would, I suspect, be far more catastrophic than what you are suggesting.

You keep claiming vague allusions to things like 'advanced civilisations', 'sunken land masses' quoting them as though they are 'facts' and add them up to a pole shift (change in axial tilt?). But from where I sit you seem to have rounding errors. http://en.wikiped...ial_tilt indicates that there is roughly 1 degree change every 40k odd years. Now I've found this http://weirdscien...e-shift/ but other than referring to Atlantis just seems to be heavy on claims and light on evidence.

Are you subscribing to the rapid change in the floating crust rather than axial tilt?

I am describing a change in the position of earths axis, the pole was at hudson bay before 10500 BC, at the center of the north american and greenland ice sheets (the canadian shield defines the old ice cap dimensions). The poles 2000 mile shift to its current position was not caused by earth crust displacement (ECD) but by the only other way it could have happened. The current 23 degree axil tilt and earths current wobble (preccession) are a result of this pole shift event, previously the earth was close to upright and there were no seasons.

All the core evidence supports this. Science does not have one shred of evidence for an Ice Age, just speculation presented as fact.

Platos account is a fact based description of one of the civilizations taken down by this pole shift, likely home to the survivors who measured and recorded what happened, now encoded in the great pyramid. Marking the meridian crossing of two stars before and after pole shift tells the story.

Let me say sennekuyl you have challenged me with class as did rubberman earlier, thankyou. Feel free to produce any evidence that contridicts what I have said and I will show you how science manipulates this evidence, done it a thousand times.

Ice was always on north america for millions of years previous to 10500 bc, there was no ice on Europe during this time, the ice ages are a lie, comon sheepboy, open those textbooks full of evidence and show im wrong.

Here we go again, not one shred of evidence produced, just a brainwashed yes man saying no no no, no diferent then when the brainwashed yes men insisted the earth was flat 500 years ago. how sad is that

Here we go again, not one shred of evidence produced, just a brainwashed yes man saying no no no, no diferent then when the brainwashed yes men insisted the earth was flat 500 years ago. how sad is that

You lack cred. Sorry. Much evidence of the same quality that the earth was the same shape 500 years ago as it is today.

Here we go again, not one shred of evidence produced, just a brainwashed yes man saying no no no, no diferent then when the brainwashed yes men insisted the earth was flat 500 years ago. how sad is that

That isn't how the truth of a matter is demonstrated. If a claim is made, evidence is produced to show how that claim was concluded. If no one can show a good reason why that evidence doesn't apply then the claim becomes valid. Otherwise we get to a situation where we have invisible pink teapots circling the earth.

What would you accept as evidence that there was no axial tilt?

You are right, I don't see the manipulations you refer to. Do you have some evidence of them?

hey you brainwashead jerk off, if you cant produce even one piece of evidence im wrong, maybe you should shut your arrogent hole!!

Maybe if you could produce some evidence that science is wrong I would? Seeing as you haven't produced one skerrick of evidence that shows science has been manipulated or is manipulating people, you should cease conversing till you have it?

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